How can you say it far surpasses Microsoft or any other when Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony all have similar agreements for their consumer device platforms - XBox, Wii, and PS3?

A couple of reasons:
- as we push for higher resolutions (especially over longer cable runs), VGA either can't handle the bandwidth or becomes more prone to interference.
- it seems kind of wasteful to convert digital display data to analog, run it through a cable, and convert it back to digital for display on LCDs. VGA was designed for analog CRTs that operate at multiple resolutions. It doesn't make sense when most displays are a fixed array of LCD pixels.
- adapters are available for legacy VGA equipment

Here comes the childish flame war!

People use Windows for the same reasons they always did:
- that's what they know
- cheap hardware
- they're forced to at work
- best non-console gaming platform
- have an app that doesn't have a counterpart on other platforms
- are ignorant of the advantages of other platforms (not intended to be inflammatory, but a good many users (on any platform, actually) are ignorant of the platforms they do not use)

By the mere fact that you said Ubuntu has more GUI tricks than MacOS X indicates to me that you can't separate the look of the UI from the function. Have you ever taken a class in UI design? Do you really think usability equates to the number of "tricks"?

Apple's UI design is based on sound research and is not there because it looks pretty. I'm not claiming Ubuntu is, but you don't seem to be talking about usability. People often swear up and down that menubars in the windows are faster than a global menu bar at the top of the screen, even though research says it isn't true. People also swear up and down that keyboard shortcuts are much quicker than mousing to menu commands, even though that has also been proven false (given good menu design).

Now, I don't doubt at all you prefer the Ubuntu UI and are quite productive in it, but you can't really say that if you started off using MacOS X instead of Ubuntu in a parallel universe that you wouldn't be even more productive.

I also don't claim Apple to be perfect either (there's lots of room for improvement), but the things they did right is good menu design, restricting over use of keyboard shortcuts, global top menu bar, and others - as these based on productivity - not just secondary eye candy.

But unless there's a top level ribbon button for every feature, this will also happen with Ribbons. Do you think every novice is going to drill down through every ribbon control? This is also a symptom of user apathy. All users need to do is look through the menus to see the features too. But for some reason, many users don't do that. Maybe they're not encouraged to? That said, expert users are now being punished at the expense of novices. While users aren't afraid to click on big ribbon controls, what happens once they learn the functions. They're left with something they can hide if they want, but then it's an extra keystroke to access the functionality again. So once they learn all the functions, how is the interface better? If the interface is not better for an expert, then why bother? Good UI design should accommodate novices and experts. A menu bar that is well organized can still be explored by novices, and it's not intrusive for experts. The ribbon should be left for "tutorial" mode at most.

When did the IT department become ruler of the the corporation? In a small company, the IT guy is a consultant you pay to drop by every few days to fix your computers. In a medium sized company, you have full time tech support guys that run around fixing your computers. Somewhere between medium and enterprise, the IT department became almighty and dictated how employees can use their computers and what software they become. If an employee needs to use a product, the IT should quit whining and support the product. They should respond with nothing except "Yes, we can install and support that, and it will cost you $x."

Safari constantly caches out web sites to use its "Top Sites" feature - even if you turn the feature off. Remove write permission from the Top Sites cache folder and it'll stop writing to the disk.

If everyone used AdBlock, who would pay for the sites that you read every day?

I agree - I support open standards too. And I expect the products I buy to abide by them. So instead of jumping on the anti-Apple bandwagon, why aren't you asking why Palm didn't write software to work with the published, standard way of reading iTunes playlists? Palm chose not to parse the iTunes library XML file and use that data to sync. Instead they chose to rely on a hack to make iTunes think the Pre an iPod. What does that have to do with standards? If I had a Pre, I'd be angry at Palm for being lazy and relying on hacks instead of supporting the published standard way of getting iTunes data.

Except that these aren't Apple's PAYING CUSTOMERS. If I have a WindowsPC, download iTunes for free, rip my CDs to iTunes, and then go buy a Pre because they said it could sync using iTunes - where exactly is Apple getting paid here? The fact is Palm was too lazy to write their own sync software and instead is leeching off of iTunes. If Apple allowed this, they'd be on the hook for every sync bug the Palm had and Apple would look bad in the customer's eyes whenever they had a sync problem. I don't see why it's Apple's responsibility to provide top-notch jukebox/sync software for their competitor's products. Let Palm write their own software - heck, they can even access the songs in iTunes and the playlists - it's not like Apple is encrypting it.

If my wife reads this study, autism is going to cause brand new ceramic tile in my kitchen.

Unfortunately, you're more likely to catch a kid that was paid $5 by someone to do the entire parking lot. The real guy is home at his computer.